In Sickness and In Health
by LZClotho
Summary: Prompt: Emma's sick and Regina nurses her back to health. Followed by some hot thank-you sex. Established SwanQueen.


_**Prompt: **__Emma's sick and Regina nurses her back to health. Followed by some hot thank-you sex. Established SwanQueen._

_**Author's note:**_ _This is for Lisa, by request. PS - I'll love you like this anytime._

**In Sickness and In Health**

.

Emma hadn't been gone that long, but Regina was grateful for her return. The fairies had said it wouldn't be an issue, traveling through the portal. For the Savior.

The Savior.

Applying a cooling compress to a feverish brow, Regina consider both her hate and love for that title. The Savior, destined to end her curse. The Savior, mother of the child adopted to secure her happy ending. The Savior, fear of whom made Regina succumb to taking a potion to forget all about it, just to be given a small chance to unreservedly love and care for her son.

However, in incomprehensible challenge to all the power Regina had once wielded to shape her own destiny - to be free, dear gods, did Regina love the woman who bore the title!

Certainly the woman's entrance into Regina's carefully crafted fairytale ending had rattled the mayor. And the first year of tumultuous introduction had been filled with incidents of animosity, rancor, invective, and defiance such conflicting destinies would decree as inevitable.

But a love had seeded and taken root, growing in this rocky soil. Mostly because Emma Swan was the most invigorating, infuriating, and incredibly stubborn human being Regina had ever known.

She challenged Regina, not only for Henry, but she challenged the battlement walls of Regina's heart, tearing them down as defiantly as any knight of old. Moments of compassion so incomprehensible in the moment, born only because Emma insisted she _saw_ her, she _knew_ her. She understood the way life had fashioned Regina, and she wanted not Regina's destruction but her salvation.

"Why on earth _didn't _you tell them you had a head-cold _before_ you left?" Regina now grumbled to her patient. Emma stirred in the throes of her fever, while Regina turned away to wet and wring the cold cloth once again.

"It's not _flying_," Emma grumbled weakly. "It's falling."

"It's _exactly _like flying," Regina sighed, pressing the cool cloth against Emma's fever-flushed throat and cheeks. "Why they needed _you_ to go through and save Aurora and Phillip..." Regina's voice trailed off as her frustration clotted up her throat. _They have their own knights. You're mine_, her mind cried.

A heavy hand lifted sloppily and feebly fingered her wrist. Despite the fact she could easily break the weakened woman's hold, Regina lowered her arm, laying her palm and forearm on Emma's chest, and met Emma's rheumy eyes.

"I'm back," Emma murmured. "I'm here."

"You could have died," Regina grumbled. "You _are_ ill."

"And you're slowly making me better. I wouldn't let anyone else see me like this," Emma admitted.

"Why is it that _I_ have the privilege of your stubbornness?"

"Because I love you." Regina snorted, not willing to give up her pique just yet. "And you," Emma added after a cough, "you love me."

Regina sighed, resuming bathing Emma with the cool cloth. Tenderly she removed sweat and listened closely to the congestion in Emma's breathing for signs of improvement.

At last, Emma closed her eyes looking somewhat more comfortable. Brushing aside damp blond hair, Regina pressed her lips to the woman's forehead, both as thermometer and a therapy. The fever was perhaps a degree or two reduced, and perhaps her love would add the final curative.

"Yes, I do," she murmured, cupping Emma's face with all the sweetness filling her chest that caring for this woman had returned to her life. The corners of Emma's lips tipped up in a weak smile.

* * *

Emma awoke gradually while she assessed the many symptoms that had plagued her body. She had no sense of how long she had been ill. But she grunted softly with pleasure when she determined her throat no longer scratched when she swallowed. Her head no longer ached with pain, nor throbbed with heat from fevered blood. Her legs and arms no longer answered with cries of pain when asked to move.

Blinking, she determined she was in a guest bedroom of Regina's home, vaguely recalling being magically transported there when Regina hefted her from the hard ground, where she had been tossed by the swirling portal that spewed her back into Storybrooke from the land of her birth. Nothing more from those first moments back in her love's arms could be recalled.

Intermittent memories of Regina's care made her think that perhaps four or five days had passed. However, now she felt completely rested, completely normal.

Well, as normal as the daughter of Prince Charming and Snow White could ever feel, she thought wryly. A sharp pang of hunger pulled at her stomach and she decided to go in search of food. When she rolled onto her back to toss aside the covers, however, her arm bumped against a very solid form.

Thoughts of food fled when she found Regina sleeping alongside her. The woman's hands were tucked under her cheek as she lay on the next pillow. Dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks, the usual fullness severely curtailed in her dark hair laying, just as exhausted as the woman, against her head. The usual caramel color of her skin was washed out. Regina had obviously succumbed to exhaustion while watching over her.

Rolling up onto her side now facing Regina, Emma lifted her head atop a bent arm and stroked the fingers of her other hand tenderly through Regina's hair. Finally she cupped the woman's cheek and, leaning forward, pressed a lingering, loving kiss to the furrowed brow. Regina stirred beneath Emma's touch, while Emma's hand drifted from temple, to cheek, to jaw, to soft throat, stroking tendons and sweeping out to satin-covered shoulder. She rested her palm over a steadily throbbing heartbeat and then cupped the lush swell of Regina's breast under her arm.

"Someone's feeling better." Regina's voice rumbled without her opening her eyes. Emma grinned as she bathed in the damn sexiest tone she had ever heard.

She rotated her thumb, feeling Regina's nipple awaken beneath it. Her grin widened. "Yeah," she murmured, dropping her lips from brow to nose. "Much better," she offered just before her lips slid over Regina's.

At first the kiss was chaste, soft tissues caressing warmly against one another. Then Emma's lips separated, increasing the extent of her skin-to-skin connection with Regina's mouth. But the small taste quickly became not enough and she eagerly deepened the kiss, sliding her tongue along the seams and creases of lips too long parted from her own. Regina's breath touched the inner recesses of her own mouth. As though she were bathing in pheromones, Emma felt her body beginning to throb with sexual need.

Her hand massaged the breast arching into her palm; her ears took in the breathy pants from lips that painted her name across her own.

Regina obviously had prepared for bed before falling asleep beside Emma however many hours ago. She wore gray satin pajamas with a wide blouse collar that buttoned down the front. Grateful for the buttons, Emma now easily parted them, craving contact with the warm silk of the skin she knew she would find underneath.

"Emma," Regina murmured. "Now?"

"Oh, yes," Emma chuckled, letting her voice vibrate against Regina's throat, sending a arcing pulse down Regina's body that made the other woman groan with pure need. "Now."

Pushing her hand behind Regina as the woman's back curved to meet Emma's mouth, Emma eased the satin pajamas first off one shoulder then the other, her lips following her hands every inch of the way.

Tossing aside the clothing, Emma stroked and nipped and kissed the supple flesh of Regina's upper body, teasing in ever smaller circles before the fists in her hair and the throaty moans demanded, "Oh, dear gods, stop teasing."

She settled her mouth wide over Regina's nipple, tapping at the bud with the tip of her tongue, grinning and chuckling against the arching woman's panting body. She settled her own thigh between Regina's. She felt like queen of the world when Regina started rocking her pubic bone against the hard muscle of her leg.

Emma alternated her attentions to Regina's nipples, massaging and pulling and sucking until Regina was thrashing, pulling and pushing and nails digging into her back. "Em-ma," Regina gasped, begging. "Em. Oh god."

As the sounds became gradually more unintelligible, Emma skimmed one of her hands down the soft plain of Regina's stomach, reveling in the clenching and quivering muscles, before she slid beneath the elastic waist of Regina's pajama bottoms. Hooray for me, Emma breathed against Regina's breastbone as her fingers found the woman had not worn undergarments. Instead Emma's fingers encountered wet hairs and swollen folds.

Her mouth watered in anticipation. Regina lifted her hips as Emma lowered herself, taking Regina's sleepwear with her. The pajama pants joined the shirt somewhere on the floor.

Emma slid down, situating herself as Regina's legs fell open and her fingers soothed through Emma's hair as if to apologize for every mean thing she had ever said. Emma chuckled.

She kissed each of Regina's beautifully long legs as she shifted them onto her shoulders.

Lowering her head, she simply smiled for several moments taking in the view, stroking Regina's belly, occasionally thumbing over the hood retracted from the swollen clit. The entire area was swollen and glistening, and Emma licked her lips.

Soothing her hands outward over both hips and then under the woman's tight ass, Emma squeezed and lifted. Regina's gasp met Emma's ears, just before her mouth covered Regina's entire sex and strong thighs clamped down, blocking out much of the sound. Except for that which seized hold in Regina's body and vibrated in her muscles.

Emma danced her tongue in a slow circle, down into the woman's hot core, then back up and nosing swollen folds, then she tapped her tongue under the bundle of nerves. Regina both panted and quaked, rocking her hips with more demand into Emma's mouth.

Flattening her tongue, Emma gathered the fluids sliding out of Regina's center, painting the warm folds and hard clit. She moaned with pleasure at the piquant flavor. Using her hands, she spread Regina's thighs wider, then she canted the wide hips, and dove in earnest.

Regina's core fluttered. Emma lifted her head and enjoyed Regina's surprised, shocked, and begging gaze. She tapped the woman's clit with her fingertips. The eruptive gasp wasn't even finished before Emma pushed three fingers into the woman's throbbing center.

She sincerely hoped it was midday and Henry was at school when Regina's back rose off the bed with a wanton, elongated cry. "Emmmmmmmm-aaaaaahhhhh!"

Chuckling, Emma dipped her head back down and tickled Regina's clit with her tongue, reveling in the feel of her fingers against the tender inner folds of her lover.

_This _was the reunion she had been hoping for the entire time she had suffered fairytale foolishness. This beauty was the only thing on her mind whenever she slept, counting the days. This woman, the mother of her son, had been the image she held in her mind when she called forth her nascent magic, defeated the threat and earned her right to come home.

"Regina," she breathed the name like a prayer, calling the woman's gaze to her.

"Em...mmmm," Regina responded. Her pupils were blown wide with lust as she caressed Emma's face, silently asking Emma to move upward. Sliding her cotton t-shirt indulgently against Regina's body Emma's movement sensitized Regina's skin anew and she mewled into Emma's shoulder. Then Emma entwined their tongues in a kiss. Moving her fingers within Regina to match the beat of her heart, she sought to provide a soothing, decadently slow filling up of the other woman's body with her love.

Regina undulated, moaned, sighed, and panted as the sensations mounted. Finally, her body simply... overflowed.

Emma's fingers became awash in fluids, adding a succulent aroma and obscenely pleasing liquid sound to the stillness of the room as Emma continued to move her fingers within her lover.

Finally, Regina's head fell back against the pillows, throat bowed, jaw and eyes clenched. Regina's orgasm was lengthy and full-bodied, inner muscles milking Emma's fingers. Her arms clutched Emma's back and fingers tangled in Emma's hair. Sweat beaded in the creases of her throat, gathering in the heaving indentations of her collarbones. Emma licked it all away, drinking it in like an elixir of healing unmatched by any magic.

She rolled onto her side once more, pulling Regina's limp form snugly into her chest. The heat of Regina's breaths against her collarbone quickly made Emma aware of her own evaporating sweat. Freeing one hand reluctantly, Emma dragged the sheet, kicked away during her hedonistic descent down her lover, back over their cooling bodies.

Stroking the back of Regina's head, Emma closed her eyes to better focus on the sensations of Regina's lips soothing over her breastbone.

Silence filled the room until all Emma could hear was her own heartbeat and Regina's breathing.

"Thank you for coming back to me," Regina whispered.

"Always," Emma murmured, brushing her lips against the woman's crown of soft hair.

##


End file.
